


stripping down to dirty socks

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Compromise, Domesticity, Established Relationship, Five Times, Fluff, Home, Jealousy, Living Together, M/M, Multiple Pov, Nesting, Possessive Behavior, Relationship Study, Strained parental relationships, True Love, negotiation, non-linear timeline, relationship snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 18:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2358557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact that there even is country music that’s strictly Canadian confuses and angers Patrick on some kind of fundamentally patriotic level, but that’s a complaint to be lodged another day. When Patrick finally finds the time to sit down and write a short novel. </p>
<p>Point is - Jonny’s the love of Patrick’s life and all, but his taste in music fucking blows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stripping down to dirty socks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a 5x5 times bumper presentation of 25 scenes of the Kane/Toews relationship as I fictionally propose it could be. Really it's just a great big domestic love fest, so drive carefully etc. 
> 
> The structure goes like this: 
> 
> \- five times Jonathan Toews gets it wrong, according to Patrick Kane.   
> \- five times Jonathan Toews gets it very right, if you ask Patrick Kane.   
> \- five things Jonathan Toews mostly does not love about the person he is in love with.   
> \- a few of Patrick Kane's biggest wins, according to Jonathan Toews.   
> \- five of the very best messes they make, together. 
> 
> As such, the timeline skips around some, but the layout should make that simple to follow along with. 
> 
> Thanks to Danielle, who helped me big time with the first parts of this.   
> Thanks to Karla, for everything, forever. 
> 
> I will always resent this story as the one that's probably somehow to blame for how the LA Kings won the Stanley Cup a second time. Please note that when I wrote most of this, that was not yet the case. I'm very very sorry, I promise. 
> 
> [ the views expressed herein, specifically those on Canadian Country music, are purely fictional!Patrick Kane's, not my own or meant to offend. ]

[ five times Jonathan Toews gets it wrong, according to Patrick Kane ]

 

i

 

Jonny never double knots their trash bags, and it makes Patrick want to double knot something around his neck. 

“I swear to fucking god, when one of these busts open all over the floor you’re cleaning up the garbage juice with your fucking face, motherfucker,” Patrick swears and vows, cursing himself for not thinking to check the bag Jonny had left in the hallway. They both woke up late, on garbage day because of course that’s when they outsleep their alarm, but Patrick is the one racing to drag their trash out onto the trolley in the corridor while Jonny wanders aimlessly around the apartment, half naked and scratching at his stomach rather than doing anything at all useful. It wouldn’t piss Patrick off that Jonny wasn’t helping if it wasn’t for how even when he isn’t helping, he has found a way to make Patrick’s task more difficult. 

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you. Double fucking knots. Double fucking knots! How hard is that to remember!” Patrick has given up on yelling because Jonny probably can’t hear him from where he’s sprawled on his back on the couch, counting the glow in the dark stars Patrick stuck to the ceiling in the living room, or whatever it is that takes precedence over taking out the trash. 

“Bites my spin-o-rama for the fucking hell of it like it’s nothing, but oh no, tying a knot and then a whole second knot is fucking rocket science. Such a useless, stupidly talented, in-fucking-sanely infuriating sack of fucking -” 

“What the hell are you muttering to yourself about?” Jonny appears. He still hasn’t found himself a shirt. Patrick hates him. 

“Knots! Can you do them!? Does Q still tie your fucking skates for you?” 

Jonny rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, settling in with one bare shoulder braced against the fridge to watch Patrick struggle to fix his mistakes while still holding two other trash bags in his other hand, because he’s a useless and infuriating asshole, as Patrick may have mentioned. 

“Not this again. It doesn’t make a difference and you know it. If a trash bag is going to split it’s not going to happen because of how many knots you have or haven’t tied at the top. That doesn’t even make sense, Patrick. It’s a waste of time.” 

“It’s about tension. How many times do we have to go through this? Double knotting strengthens and centers the force of your hold when you lift it. One knot doesn’t do shit. _You’re_ a waste of time.” Patrick is legitimately angry about this, and he hardly ever gets legitimately angry about much at all, but this is about science and logic and Jonny thinking he can flout these things. It’s not on. It’s just not right. Patrick is pissed. 

And then Jonny unfolds his arms and steps away from the fridge, right into Patrick’s path to the front door. 

“That’s not what you said last night,” he says, all up in Patrick’s personal space now and pouting at him a little but mostly to keep from smiling. 

Patrick has his hands full, so he can’t push Jonny away when he leans in to kiss him. Which he absolutely would, otherwise. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. 

“I don’t remember telling you you weren’t a waste of time,” Patrick murmurs, cross-eyed from not wanting to look away from Jonny’s mouth until he couldn’t see it anymore because it was on his, already totally resigned to how his anger retreats whenever Jonny comes close and stays there. 

“Right after we got out of the shower, remember? Your knees were still weak and I caught you before they gave out, and you said I was a ‘handy guy to have around’, said I was your favourite way to waste an hour.” Jonny is nearly whispering now, his voice rough and so low it keeps threatening to crack. He still hasn’t found himself a shirt to wear, and Patrick loves him. 

“Obviously you addled my brain, too,” Patrick perseveres, and Jonny snorts. 

“You bet I did,” he agrees, and Patrick goes cross-eyed again until he has to close his eyes for real, because jesus christ can Jonathan Toews kiss. “And when I come back I’m going to do it again. And again. And maybe again, until you forget all about me not double knotting your precious trash bags, okay? I won’t forget again,” he promises, and it’s not until he walks away that Patrick realizes he has managed to take the garbage out of Patrick’s hands without him even noticing. Definitely a handy guy to have around. 

They’re so late that morning they have to put in their off ice workouts after morning skate, and the argument is forgotten before they even leave the house. 

When the next garbage day rolls around Patrick is awake well before his alarm sounds, but he doesn’t have to be, because all their trash bags are triple knotted already. 

 

____

 

ii

 

On the rare occasion that they decide to cook a real Sunday roast together, the carrots become a matter of war tactics and merciless subterfuge. 

Jonny always cuts the carrots way too small, thin enough that they’ll cook to next to nothing and no matter how many times Patrick lectures him on this, he refuses to change his methods. 

“Seriously?” Patrick asks, going up on his tiptoes to look over Jonny’s shoulder, sighing and rolling his eyes but folding his arms around Jonny’s waist and pushing his hands up underneath the hem of Jonny’s tshirt. Not very far, but far enough to find the warmth of his stomach beneath it. 

“This is how my mom always cut ‘em when I was a kid,” Jonny murmurs, leaning back into Patrick and twisting around to push his mouth over the line of Patrick’s cheekbone in a smudged kind of kiss. 

“Sure. When you were a kid. Or last week,” Patrick says, because he’s been to enough Toews family meals to know that nothing about Andree’s methods to make dreaded carrots more enticing and less threatening to her sons hasn’t changed since they were toddlers. Patrick always ate his vegetables with relish when he was a kid, because Donna Kane forwent creative cutting methods for good old fashioned bribery instead, and Patrick has always responded well to incentive. Jonny knows this all too well. 

“You’re too old to be babying yourself still,” Patrick informs Jonny, because even if he does secretly find it sweet that Jonny is so sentimental, he’s also a big fan of being able to find the vegetables on his dinner plate. 

“Maybe. But who says I can’t baby you?” Jonny doesn’t look at Patrick when he says this, which is code for ‘I really mean what I’m saying right now even though I’m trying desperately to play it off as a joke, so please don’t make fun of me and please don’t make me look at you while I feel feelings I’m afraid to feel.’ As if Patrick would ever intentionally make Jonny feel uncomfortable about anything. Up to and including his apparently significant desire to take care of Patrick in ways that go above and beyond. 

“No one. No one says that,” Patrick says with his nose in the crook of Jonny’s neck and his hands making a more conscious effort to press their bodies together tight and close. 

“Good,” Jonny says, decisive, still chopping up his carrots into minuscule little columns, never having missed a beat. “Because you’ll make good practice.” 

Patrick keeps quiet. About the way Jonny chooses to prepare their dinner but more importantly about what what he’s just said conjures up in Patrick’s mind: the astounding sound and image of tiny little bare feet running circles around this kitchen, around them. Grubby little fingers grabbing for entire handfuls of crappily cut carrots at once, the raucous way Patrick _and_ their kids would laugh at food that gets smushed into Jonny’s face, fruit mashed up in their other dad’s hair. 

“Maybe … maybe cut up another couple carrots, yeah?” he murmurs, and he feels it when Jonny near shivers in his arms, grinning against the side of Patrick’s face and moved in some kind of delight. Happiness. And excitement, Patrick hopes, because that’s what thinking about their forever together inspires in him. 

“For practice?” Jonny asks, already stretching out across the counter to grab more. 

Maybe he’s not ready to say it out loud just yet, not quite there where Jonny is and ready to tie himself to that kind of huge hope, but he thinks he could be, he’s game to try. They’ll get there together, if it’s where they need to be. 

“For dinner,” Patrick corrects him, enjoying the reach of Jonny’s body against his, the easy, automatic way they fit back together like clockwork when Jonny stills. “Just in case. Because who knows how many mouths we’ll have to feed, right?”

 

____

 

iii

 

The next time they play the Oilers, Ference takes a run at Patrick, and Jonny does what he always does when there’s even the vague possibility that someone deems themselves capable of and able to hurt Patrick. It wouldn’t be an unfair fight, captain versus captain the way it always should be, if one is involved, but Patrick would still rather have an entire hockey team beat him up than have to stand by and watch Jonny willingly get himself into that kind of situation. Like, maybe even the Bruins. _That’s_ how not into seeing Jonny try to fight he is. 

“Cool it, Captain,” Patrick says, kicking Jonny’s skate the next time they’re both on the bench and trying to make him remember who he is right now, who he is to Patrick, here. They’re not in love, on this bench. They’re not wholly devoted to anything but this sport when they’re wearing these sweaters. Jonny forgets this far too easily for Patrick’s liking, and far, far too often. 

“I could take him. He’s old and his team sucks. Losing so much has to weaken your spirit or whatever.” It would be funny if Jonny was joking even a little bit. 

“He would murder you, Jonathan Toews. He’s bigger than you, and he fights hockey players about as often as you brush your teeth. Do not poke that bear, or you’ll regret it. I’ll make you regret it,” Patrick promises wholeheartedly. 

“It makes me crazy when people push you around,” Jonny says, sullen and solemn, and Patrick knocks their knees together, gives Jonny a subtle butt slap when he gets up to take a shift. 

“I know, babe. But we’ve made it this far without fighting, and we’ll make it to another couple of Cups at least. When we’re ancient and useless I’ll let you beat people up to defend my honour. Deal?” 

“Deal,” Jonny huffs, resigned but not at all happy about it because he never is. “But if he tries to take me on you’ll fight him, right? Because you’d never let someone disrespect your captain like that?” Jonny is grinning now, and maybe one day Patrick will get bored of how easy he is to handle, but that day is not today. 

“Oh absolutely,” Patrick nods, “I’ll fight him so hard it’ll be like Bolly and Shawzy are out there doing it for me.” 

 

_____

 

iv

 

Almost every single time they land in the modern day Hades that is St. Louis, some talentless hack decides the time is right to dredge up Jonny’s sordid, shameful history. 

“Toews, you’ve obviously had a lot of success in the past with our own T.J. Oshie on your wing, how does he measure up against the wingers you play with these days?” 

And under any other circumstance Patrick would be and usually is pissed at Jonny for letting their relationship affect their careers in any way, shape, or form, but this is his blind spot, this is where he needs Jonny to be his boyfriend for five seconds first and foremost; above all else. 

Jonny, predictably, does not seem to realize this. 

“The NHL is full of really talented young wingers right now,” is his answer this time, and he smiles right through it. “We’ve got a couple on our team, and I know from experience that St. Louis have a couple of their own, so this is always an interesting match-up for us. This is one I like to win,” Jonny will admit, when he won’t say ‘Patrick Kane is the best and T.J. Oshie wishes he could measure up. I play for a better team and I go to bed with a better boyfriend these days, my whole life is a dream come true.’ 

Maybe Jonny has a point when he protests at how Patrick still takes T.J.’s cheating on Jonny much, much harder than Jonny ever did, but Patrick absolutely has a point when he maintains that anyone who would cheat on Jonny deserves to suffer every single day for the rest of their miserable, Jonny-less lives. They certainly don’t deserve the professional respect and personal friendship that T.J. got instead and that Patrick will never understand. 

Maybe Jonny would understand Patrick’s vehemence better if Patrick ever explained the root of it to him, Patrick realizes, and so. 

“You don’t like …” Patrick has to take a deep breath, and he’s not surprised. They’ve navigated some pretty choppy waters to get to where they are today, and how they are now, but this one is still a sticking point for Patrick, something of a sinkhole. “You don’t still have feelings for him, right? I know you love me, I know it’s not like that, but you’re not … you don’t think you’d still be with him if he hadn’t cheated on you, right? You don’t wish he never had?” 

It’s not often that Patrick doesn’t know what Jonny is going to say, or isn’t totally sure how he feels about something, and if he holds his breaths any longer he’s going to get lightheaded. 

Jonny looks up from where he’d been been hanging his suits up in the wardrobe of their hotel room and he lets the hanger he’d been holding go, lets tomorrow’s game day suit fall to the floor in a heap of potential creases. 

He stands stock still and looks at Patrick for about thirty seconds, searching his face for something Patrick doesn’t know how to show him; some kind of answer that Patrick probably doesn’t have, and so Patrick looks back at him with all the naked hope he feels; lets his face show Jonny every little bit of love he has for him. 

Jonny steps on his suit as he crosses the room to reach Patrick, and Patrick remembers how to breathe. 

“I wouldn’t change a single thing about this, Patrick. Not anything, not one day. I love you, and I love playing with you. I love our life. This is everything I’ve ever wanted, and you need to know that. You need to know that every day, all the fucking time. This is it, for me.” 

And yeah, that’s what Patrick had thought. 

It doesn’t hurt that Patrick scores a hat trick the next night and leaves T.J. Oshie with a solid minus four, courtesy of the Chicago Blackhawks and their endless superiority. Jonny might roll his eyes at Patrick’s near-manic grin in the locker room after the game, but he also skips out on his usual post-game drinks with T.J. routine to lie in bed with Patrick and watch Pixar movies, instead. 

Maybe Patrick will volunteer for media duties the next time they come to town. He’d be more than willing to speak frankly on the comparative achievements of the wingers on these teams. 

 

____

 

v

 

One of the more superficially irritating things that Jonny does to piss Patrick off happens in their bedroom, which is a surprise to him when it registers for him eventually. He’d been pretty sure that no problem they ever had to overcome throughout the course of their relationship would occur in so sacred and wholly fulfilling a space, but here they are in their bed and Patrick is decidedly unhappy. 

“You need to let me up, man, we should shower before we get stuck this way.” 

Their sweat is cooling the longer they lie like this, and whoever’s come is pooling in Patrick’s belly button, it’s starting to get tacky. It’s not pretty, and it’s not pleasant. Which is not to even touch upon the fact that the more time they spend lazing around like this, the less time they’ll have for cuddling. The cuddling is maybe Patrick’s favourite part, and by that he means it comes as a not at all close second to the sex. 

But Jonny makes no move to let Patrick detangle them. In fact, he curls the arm that had been lying across Patrick’s back all the way around his waist, and he moves to make his body feel somehow heavier where his weight is draped half across Patrick’s body; his head on Patrick’s shoulder. 

“In a minute,” he murmurs, and Patrick is only mildly irritated; more idly curious than anything else. It’s not so much the lying like this that displeases him, so much as it’s not really understanding why Jonny wants to. 

“Why not now? What are you getting out of this, man?” 

Jonny’s breath comes out in a rush and wakes goosebumps across the skin that stretches in the dip between Patrick’s shoulders. He hums softly against Patrick’s shoulderblade, and Patrick gears up for a confession, because that’s what Jonny does when he’s struggling to find a way to word something he’s never said out loud before. Something that matters. 

“I like us like this. I like _you_ like this,” Jonny says, low and careful. 

“Like what? Sweaty and filthy? Jeez, talk about hockey player neurosis at work; alive and well in my own marital bed.” It’s not that Patrick doesn’t get it, because he does. He likes it a little too much when Jonny is bruised up and bleeding, when he’s exhausted after a game and out of breath from it. Jonny barely held together after a really tough playoff series is maybe one of Patrick’s favourite ways to have him, so he’s not about to judge. But it seems incongruent with Jonny and Jonny’s tastes; always trending more toward the carefully contained, the details and the precision whereas Patrick comes alive in the fray, in the mess and the hot bleed of colour he finds far outside the lines. It’s surprising, is all. 

“No, not. Not like … practice sweaty, or workout gross. Like … this,” Jonny says, giving up on the struggle to explain with words to continue with touch instead. He shows Patrick what he means with the hesitant fingers he trails across the top of Patrick’s thigh in slow warning, and Patrick says he’s listening by hitching his knee up higher against the sheets, giving Jonny the room he needs to finish saying what he’s trying to say. 

“Like this,” Jonny whispers against Patrick’s skin, gently pushing his pinkie and his ring finger into Patrick, still wet and warm, loose with Jonny’s come. 

“Oh,” Patrick says, biting down on his own bottom lip rather than on the pillow under his head because he refuses to be a cliche right now. 

“You like me sticky with your come, huh?” he adds, because Jonny doesn’t know him at all if he thinks Patrick will just take that lying down. If Jonny’s going to allude to it, Patrick’s going to say it outright. He refuses to be outdone by Jonny whether that’s in front of thousands and thousands of people or no one at all. 

“Jesus, Patrick,” Jonny huffs, going up onto his knees so he can stretch to kiss Patrick’s mouth, his fingers still inside him. 

It takes some work and compromise in both their parts, but eventually they manage to come up with a system that means Patrick gets his cuddle time last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and Jonny gets what Patrick takes to calling his ‘private signing sessions’ when they wake up from their naps, and as often as he likes on their off days. 

 

____

 

[ five times Jonathan Toews gets it very right, if you ask Patrick Kane ] 

 

i

 

Patrick has just had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game, and so Patrick is in no mood to talk to anyone at all. Not even Jonny, tonight. This bears no reflection on the two points Jonny picked up himself, but rather the years of experience that tell Patrick that Jonny just isn’t capable of being as hard on Patrick as Patrick sometimes needs to be on himself. It is only sometimes these days, and that’s a huge boon to Jonathan Toews’ list of accomplishments. 

It’s not like they lost the game or anything, but Patrick still feels a keen sense of some kind of loss after the performance he gave tonight; the effort he forced all night long with a rotating cast of respective linemates that never stayed put long enough to work up any kind of chemistry, were hardly ever there when Patrick forgot himself and followed his instincts through to the kind of plays only Jonny could finish for him, instead. Jonny hadn’t been there, and Patrick shouldn’t need him to be. He can and he will want him to be anywhere and everywhere that Patrick is for as long as they live, probably, but he was playing hockey long before he met Jonathan Toews, and he’ll never let himself need anyone when he’s on the ice. Jonny isn’t always going to be there, Jonny is barely there now, and Patrick will deal with that. 

As soon as he lets them both into the apartment Jonny disappears into the belly of it, out of Patrick’s sight before he has even locked the door behind them. That’s good, and Patrick isn’t hurt by it. Patrick wants to be by himself right now, and he had made that clear to everyone with his radio silence in the locker room. It’s thoughtful of Jonny to listen. Patrick is pleased. Patrick wants to be alone. 

And he is. Just not for long. 

Twenty minutes later Jonny returns, comes to find him. Without a word he takes Patrick by the hand and pulls him up off the couch, leads him away from the darkness of the living room off toward the soft light that’s coming from their biggest bathroom, not one they use all that often. 

Still not saying a thing, Jonny closes the bathroom door behind them, and immediately, wordlessly, gets to work slowly stripping Patrick first and then himself. Jonny tidies their clothes into a folded pile while Patrick gets settled in the bath he has drawn, and then he switches both of their phones off and puts them into the sink, out of sight, before he steps in behind Patrick, folding his long legs around him and resting his forearms along Patrick’s thighs, pressing his mouth to the top of Patrick’s spine but still not saying anything at all. 

They sit like this, not speaking and only moving to get more comfortable against one another, finding better and better ways to fit together, until Jonny has topped the bath up with more hot water four times. Jonny sits up, his arms a cage around Patrick, along the sides of the bath, and Patrick lies back against his chest and listens to his heartbeat, watches the way the candlelight stretches and flickers short shadows up along the tile, the darkness making the room seem so much smaller than it really is. Big enough just for them. 

By the time Jonny lifts a jug up off the floor and starts to wash and rinse Patrick’s hair, Patrick himself couldn’t, because his fingers are pruned and sensitive, water-sore in a way that feels cathartic; cleansing. 

When he steps out of the bath, Patrick lets Jonny towel him off, and then he lets him fold him up in a huge, fluffy towel that easily encompasses the two of them when Patrick opens up his arms and draws Jonny in. 

Without saying a single thing, Jonny tells Patrick exactly what he needs to hear, that night. 

 

____

 

ii

 

It’s been a while since their stalls were moved to separate sides of the locker room, and they both know it had to be done, but neither of them were or are particularly happy about the change. 

The hardest part of being together in ways that went beyond and meant more than their jobs - more than _hockey_ \- was re-drawing boundaries. Building new ones, moving them backwards and forwards, even erecting new ones from scratch, with grudging resignation. 

The locker room had become a not entirely expected or well anticipated complication for Patrick and Jonny; a brand new and struggled through conversation. 

Patrick had tried (at first, as usual) to bluff through it, because most of the more important, more shocking, more impressive things Patrick has done are the result of his belief that he can in the face of the expectation that no one could. Patrick had pushed, and Jonny had welcomed him - making space in his stall, in his space, in the pockets of his gear bag as easily and unquestioningly as he had made space for Patrick in his home, in his car, right next to him in his bed. 

Jonny has always treated what was his as if it was only ever a matter of time before it became Patrick’s too. 

But eventually they’d learned the tiresome and inconvenient way that stalls were not to be shared, and that relationships could not be conducted in private when prying eyes had cut themselves a key to this one space that Jonny and Patrick lived in together. And so Patrick had gone back to where he’d been put, across the room from where he belonged, and Jonny had sulked for a while, because he’s never pleased or willing to accept any kind of defeat that means someone or something else gets to decide on the feet and inches that lie between him and the man that he loves. 

Patrick had joined him just a little bit, out of solidarity. To keep him company. Because Jonny was still his teammate, sure. His captain, absolutely. But still the guy who has no pre-game routine and yet habitually insists on using Patrick’s stick tape right after he does, the same one that will leave his dirty socks on Patrick’s side of the bed tonight when he strips down again for the third or fourth or fifth time today, this time in their home. 

And then Jonny had stopped sulking, and Patrick had resigned himself to a lifetime of having to walk away from Jonny every time they walked into that room, or headed out of it to sit together on the bench and skate the same way they sit in their stalls: there for one another but apart; suited like they were never meant to be any which way but together but good enough for everyone else split up and separated - repackaged and sold off. 

They’ve had to grow used to that. 

They’ve also fought hard to never let it get in the way of how they feel about each other and how freely, if sometimes necessarily creatively, they communicate that to one another. 

And the matter of locker room etiquette had been occasion for Jonny’s breakout performance in that regard, if you ask Patrick. 

No one else notices that Jonny takes the long way around on his return from the laundry bin, but Patrick notices when it means that Jonny pauses by his stall, just for a second, just long enough to cup a big, warm hand over the nape of Patrick’s neck and squeeze gently until he shivers. 

It’s done so quickly and so easily, so absolutely automatically that nobody else notices it has been done at all, so seamless are Jonny’s movements as he spins instinct into smooth, sure action, but Patrick can’t stave off the goosebumps he gets when Jonny passes close by him on their way out of the showers and rubs his own towel up into the line of Patrick’s spine, collecting the rivulets of water that Patrick can’t reach. 

Everybody hugs when goals are scored, and it’s pretty customary to congratulate teammates you weren’t on the ice with at the time, so hardly anyone thinks anything of it when Jonny muscles his way up next to Patrick on the bench after one of them scores, and nobody ever picks up on the way they perfect a brief little twist of their bodies before they get up off the bench that creates just a sliver of space, just enough of a screen for one of them to lean in and brush the tip of their nose against the other’s cheekbone or jawline, a quick and sweet, small ‘hey there, I’m right here and so are you,’ in the midst of other things. Things that might be more important in the moment, but can’t compare in the grand scheme of it all. 

Jonny sticks to the rules that they themselves see to be reasonable and necessary measures when they’re at work and doing their jobs, but he finds plenty of ways to remind Patrick that wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, they’re together and that means something to Jonny. 

That means a lot to Patrick. 

 

____

 

iii

 

Jonny drinks tea, and Patrick drinks coffee, so mostly they stick to making their own hot beverages the way they like them. It’s easier, and it makes more sense, even if Patrick had grown up in the belief that love and marriage and sharing a home and building a life together was all about coming home from work and making tea for two, or leaving the living room during the breaks of tv shows in the evening to always return with two mugs; never having to ask. He and Jonny are a modern family, or whatever. They have a joint bank account and their parents buy them gifts as a couple, so what does it matter that they drink different drinks? 

It doesn’t. 

But Patrick’s favourite mornings are still the ones where Jonny lets him sleep in, even if only for a couple minutes, and by the time Patrick wanders out to the kitchen, still yawning, he’s sitting at the breakfast bar with his tea in his hands but the coffee machine gurgling away in the corner, hissing and spitting in the most beautiful language Patrick has ever heard at that hour of the morning. 

The coffee machine is something of a mystery in itself in their home, this looming and aggressively shiny espresso crafting thing having appeared in Jonny’s apartment a few weeks before they started dating, and then following them to this place they’d bought together the year after, even though Jonny swears up and down he doesn’t know how any of this happened. 

Equally mysteriously, Jonny knows exactly how to work the thing, even though he has never asked Patrick to show him how, and Patrick has never seen him read the manual that he found in a drawer once they’d moved in here. He doesn’t know if it’s a combination of sheer determination and practice, or if Jonny secretly reads appliance manuals in whatever scraps of down time he finds in the life they’ve built together, but on mornings like these Patrick doesn’t really care to ask those kinds of questions. 

Today Jonny brings Patrick his coffee in bed, with just the right amount of cream and no sugar, exactly how Patrick likes it. 

Jonny brings himself back to bed, too, settling in next to Patrick with freezing cold feet, wearing that scratchy tshirt he can’t stand, but taking over the space they share in the very middle of the bed like right here half on top of Patrick is where he means to be and plans to stay, and that’s exactly how Patrick loves him. 

 

____

 

iv

 

Jonny’s taste in music doesn’t seem to extend past really awful Canadian emo from when he was a teen and really awful Canadian country that sounds equally horrendous to Patrick whether it’s from this month or thirty years ago. The fact that there even is country music that’s strictly Canadian confuses and angers Patrick on some kind of fundamentally patriotic level, but that’s a complaint to be lodged another day. When Patrick finally finds the time to sit down and write a short novel. 

Point is - Jonny’s the love of Patrick’s life and all, but his taste in music fucking blows. 

They have rules about this that are an absolute necessity in the interest of the health and prosperity of their fairytale romance, and these rules mostly amount to Jonny keeping his terrible, terrible cds hidden away in the driver’s door of his car where Patrick can’t even see them, let alone come within snapping distance of them. 

Jonny doesn’t protest Patrick’s very important rules, and he doesn’t bitch about it, and this is all very good for their relationship and their commitment to compromise and all of that theoretical touchy feely stuff that Sharpy is always talking about and asking them for advice on. 

Really, Jonny’s support for Patrick’s absolute intolerance of sensationally bad, outrageously godless music is some kind of blessing. 

But what’s even better about the whole affair is how Jonny doesn’t call Patrick out on it when he purposefully and yet totally helplessly flies in the face of everything he believes in and holds Jonny to; knows in his heart of hearts to be the true and honorable way to deal with his tragic plight. 

Because as truly fuck-awful as the stuff Jonny insists on putting in his eardrums is, the dumb happy face he makes when he listens to it is kind of one of the best things Patrick has ever seen. As excruciatingly agonizing as it is to be exposed to that crap, listening to Jonny sing along softly and only mostly off key is maybe Patrick’s favourite way to spend time, sometimes. 

And so sometimes Patrick will wordlessly switch the radio to ‘cd’ and hold a hand out to Jonny as they drive to or from practice or a game or dinner or whatever, and Jonny only rolls his eyes every now and then, mostly smiles instead when he passes him whatever CD he’s favouring this week. 

And sometimes some of the songs Jonny sings along to actually hit a little close to home for Patrick; usually the most horrible of country songs, the ones about loving someone forever and feeling the weight and span of that every single day, knowing it like a constant that somehow sees every minute you plan on spending with that person packed into every moment they're already by your side, every sideways half-grin they quirk your way or every shiver they send through you with the simple touch of their hand in yours, that reminder that they’re _yours_.

Jonny sings along, smiling to himself and at Patrick like the secret of Patrick's tolerance in these moments isn't the only one they're sharing, and he never makes fun of Patrick or tries to strong arm him into listening to his music rather than the radio.

Jonny leaves it in Patrick's hands, and that's why Patrick never minds showing Jonny all of his cards. 

 

____

 

v

 

Fighting with his father isn't anything at all new for Patrick, and it's not new to Jonny, either. 

Jonny's relationship with his parents is good and solid and easy in ways that made Patrick think, back when they were rookies, that maybe Jonny wouldn't get it. But Jonny had never chewed him out for not wanting to call home, not the way his mom had, and Patrick has never seen the scandalized look on Jonny's face that he used to fearfully imagine when he would lose his temper and hang up on his dad after a shitty game, after a fucking great one.

Fighting with his father is nothing new or out of the ordinary for Patrick. It's not anything that's going to change any time soon, either, and it's something that he and Jonny just have to make room for when they pool their lives into unbroken and shared middle ground, space laid out with spots earmarked for the good and the bad; the sum of them present and accounted for - combined.

Patrick learned a long time ago that Jonny wouldn't judge him for his inability to escape or truly repair his strained, overwhelming relationship with his parents; their inability to balance out too much love and too little consensus on what does and doesn't constitute respect, but he hadn't always known that Jonny would deal with it the way he does. He hadn't known that anyone could make him feel better about it, or more than that - would care to try. 

“Hey,” Jonny says, leaning over the back of the couch to kiss the corner of Patrick's mouth, his fingers fanning out across the side of his neck, his jaw, featherlight and so welcome after hours when he wasn't here, wasn't around to touch Patrick in the ways that make him feel put back together and held safely there like that. “Did you talk to your dad?”

Last night's fight hadn't been any worse than usual. Awful and frustrating and upsetting, but not unusually so.

“Nah. Not yet,” Patrick says, tilting his head onto the back of the couch to look at Jonny upside down. What looks like a frown to him is Jonny smiling. Not at what Patrick just said, or at all in reaction to this conversation. Just in the usual, blanket-fond way he has of looking at Patrick when he isn't yelling at him or frowning at him or looking at him aghast, shouting at him in joy or lifting his chin, baring his throat to Patrick with his mouth open and wet, his breath shaking out of him.

“Okay. Well I'm back if you need me. Or if you want me,” he tells Patrick, with nothing but the smallest nod to the potentially lewd insinuation that Patrick could dig out of that, an impish little leer that Patrick can only find the tail end of. Jonny is a good guy even when Patrick would prefer he wasn't.

Patrick is in no rush to talk to his father, because sometimes he feels like the longer he puts off the 'I'm saying I'm sorry even though you're not and you should, you should be too,' conversation, the more hassle he saves himself.

But Jonny is back, and Patrick really has no need or excuse to hide from anything when Jonny is around, so he gets up and fixes him a cup of tea, grabs himself a water because it's too late in the day to drink coffee, and when he goes to find Jonny he's lying across their bed fiddling with his phone, probably exchanging tame Canadian insults with Sharpy or puppy pictures with any number of their teammates. He doesn't look up at Patrick when he sets his tea on the bedside table – just murmurs a distracted 'thanks, babe' at him – and he only moves to accommodate Patrick when he climbs up beside him and settles in lying half across Jonny, half in his lap.

Jonny doesn't say a word while Patrick talks on the phone to his father, and he doesn't say anything about it after, either. He holds Patrick's hand, and he presses his mouth into Patrick's curls. He doesn't have to do more than that to prove to Patrick that he'll always be on Patrick's side. 

 

____

 

[ five things Jonathan Toews mostly does not love about the person he is in love with. ]

 

i

Jonny loves hard. He doesn’t love easily, but once he does, that’s it. He’s in it. Never has this ever been more true or clear than in the case of Patrick Kane, because maybe it took Jonny all of several months to really fall for him (and Jonny still doesn’t know how the hell it took him that long) but once it happened Jonny happily wrapped himself tight and comfy in the knowledge that he was never getting out of this one. 

Patrick is it for Jonny, and he knows that he’s it for Patrick too, but Patrick treats it like a forgone conclusion, like something that doesn't even have to be acknowledged, while Jonny needs to talk about it sometimes. He wants it to be known. He wants it clear and present, pretty much always.

Sometimes he gets a little insecure about it. But only a little. Only sometimes. Hardly ever, anymore.

At first, it had been nerve-wracking. On occasion. On a lot of occasions.

The worst of those had been in the middle of the night, when Patrick would physically push Jonny away. Patrick gets hotter than Jonny does, quicker than Jonny does, and Jonny had spent a lot of nights lying next to him, as far on his own side of his bed as he could get, quietly freaking out before he figured out that that was all it was. Before Patrick's sleeping body figured out that Jonny was there, and this was something that wasn't going to change any time soon.

Jonny had never thought that Patrick was consciously pushing him away, he'd never taken it as any real or meaningful kind of slight. But waking up to Patrick shoving weakly at the arm Jonny had thrown over his waist, kicking fitfully at their tangled feet in the darkest hours of the night, that had taken Jonny to an even darker place, and in the frighteningly new and huge early days of the whole thing, Jonny had found himself totally unable to deal with the idea of Patrick's rejection. Absolutely opposed to Patrick wanting him anywhere but closer, needing anything from Jonny but _more_.

Who knows. Maybe Jonny was right back then, and maybe he wouldn't get through it if Patrick really did push him away. Maybe he wouldn't walk away from that unharmed. Maybe he wouldn't walk away from that at all.

But he's pretty confident these days that he'll never get the chance to find out; will never even have to try.

While Jonny was worrying himself to sleep with the thought that Patrick might not want him the way Jonny wanted Patrick, maybe wasn’t built to want him for as long as Jonny was set to need him, Patrick had been getting used to them sharing a bed, unfurling into the space that they shared now and committing to that the only way he knew how – slowly but surely.

These days, Jonny doesn't mind it one bit when he wakes up to Patrick shoving him off in the middle night. Actually, that part of Jonny's night has in a lot of ways become something of a highlight; a personal favourite. Because as scary as the memories of what this used to mean to him are, Jonny has nothing but love for what comes next, now.

Patrick rolls away from him in his sleep because he gets overheated, always warm blooded no matter what season it is, no matter what he did or didn't wear to bed. He moves away from Jonny in search of cool sheets, pillows that they haven't shared and made warm, too warm, with their sleep-sweet skin and the heat they generate lying tangled up together, bodies touching in slow tides of smooth, subconscious friction.

But when he finds too much of that, he comes back. When he gets so cool that he's not warm at all anymore, only as warm as he might get if he were in this bed alone, that registers to him, even in sleep, as not right, and he reaches for Jonny again.

As alarming as it had once been to be pushed away by a sleeping Patrick, that has nothing on the way Jonny gets to lie awake now and feel it, go with it, when Patrick reaches for him without thinking about it, without having to.

Being pulled into Patrick's mostly lax, soon to be warm again arms is enough to make up for far more than just Jonny's old and unfounded, dumb insecurities. 

 

____

 

ii

 

Patrick on a breakaway or skating up to take his shot in the shootout is probably every goalie’s single greatest fear, and that’s just one of the trillions of things that Jonny loves and admires about him. He’s ruthlessly talented with a puck under his control; completely unapologetic about the things he can do even though sometimes they’re things that his peers can only dream of emulating. Patrick doesn’t brag about his skill, doesn’t posture. He does what he can, and he does it the only way he can - totally naturally. 

Well. Mostly. 

“Did you see that?” he’ll ask during practices, skating right to Jonny after he has scored one kind of impossible goal or another. 

“Nice, huh?” he’ll sometimes preen when Jonny is still shaking his head at whatever act of natural defiance Patrick has just committed. 

He only ever does it when Jonny is around, specifically when no one else is in earshot, so Jonny lets it go. If they can’t be their true, sometimes obnoxiously cocky selves with one another, when can they? Jonny loves the razor sharp edge Patrick’s smile takes on when he does something new, when he defeats the only person out there who is his real competition - himself. Jonny knows that Patrick’s pride doesn’t ever come at the expense of anyone else, so he’s fine with it. 

What he is not fine with, however, is; 

“Yeah, he kinda took a leaf out of my book there, didn’t he? It’s just nice to see the younger guys progressing, you know?” 

“I don’t know if I can call that one mine, but I could give him some pointers, for sure.” 

“It’s flattering, honestly. It’s a cool kind of challenge to see someone else in the league take on something I can do; it means I have to push myself to try something new. It’s all friendly competition.” 

Sure, Jonny has to place some of the blame firmly at the feet of the reporters who are stupid enough to bring these questions to Patrick, but that doesn’t make it any easier to listen to Patrick talk about shootout moves like he invented every single of them; like he’s the only player in the league who ever takes a chance. 

It’s a matter of decorum; is all. Jonny likes it when Patrick is cocky with him - he might go so far as to say he fucking loves it - but Jonny’s whole life has been pro hockey and he knows how this sport takes to players who have pride that is personal rather than selfless. Jonny knows that Patrick is the best, and he’s pleased to say that Patrick knows so too, but he wishes that Patrick could see the need to sound only humble, even where it shouldn’t for one second be a consideration. 

Hockey is a sport, but when the third period ends it becomes a game, and Jonny respects Patrick’s decision not to play. 

That doesn’t mean he likes it. 

And then one night, Patrick throws a leg over the boards already grinning, skates up to Varlamov _still_ grinning, and he seems to have left his bag of tricks at home, because he takes the puck straight down the ice and sends it home five hole without fuss, without complication. It’s only when he scores that he stops smiling, returning to the bench with some kind of grim look of determination on his face, and holding it until Jonny gets it. 

Patrick wins them the game, and Patrick is a little asshole. 

“I definitely followed my captain’s lead, out there,” he says, afterwards, smile firmly in place again. Jonny wants to punch him in the face. “There’s so much to his game these days that he doesn’t have the luxury of putting on clinics for this or that anymore, but I figured it was about time to celebrate one of his Junior showstoppers. He’s too humble to do it, probably couldn’t even tell you which moves he used anymore, so I did it for him.” 

When they get home after the game, Patrick insists on tooling around with one of the sticks Jonny has lying around, and he only lets up when Jonny tells him, grudgingly, that he has that particular shot down. He’s still impossible, after, doesn’t even have the decency to stop grinning when Jonny pins him up against a window and tries to kiss the look of triumph right off his face, and sometimes Jonny still doesn’t know how he ended up here, like this with Patrick. 

Patrick is still a little asshole, and most days that’s exactly why Jonny loves him. 

 

____

 

iii

 

“For fuck’s sake, Patrick,” Jonny says, hip checking him away from the front of the fridge so he can finish putting their groceries away himself. “If you’re not going to do it the right way, why even bother?” 

“I was doing it the right way,” Patrick protests, just like he always does. 

“Seriously? We’re doing this again?” 

Patrick bares his teeth at Jonny this time, and Jonny sometimes finds it in his heart to back down from this particular argument, but oh no, not today. Not now. 

“For the millionth time, Patrick, you have to rotate things. Newer stuff goes at the back, whatever we already had gets pushed to the front. You really want to clean the fridge out when we’ve got old mayo growing new mould in the back!?” 

“For the millionth time, Jonathan,” Patrick parrots, hopping up onto the countertop and drumming his heels against the cabinet doors because he knows that pisses Jonny off, “When have we ever had anything in our fridge for long enough that it could go off? We live off catering, and anything else we get is bought with small matters like roadtrips in mind. We’re not dealing in perishables, here. We’re not salting meat for the winter,” he stretches out a leg to kick Jonny in the butt next time he bends over, and Jonny is going to miss their next roadtrip because he will be in prison for manslaughter. “You know I love all the stupid shit you’re extra crazy about, but this is just a weird one, man. You’re not in Canada anymore, Dorothy.” 

And how dare Patrick. How dare he make out like this is a matter of nationality, when it’s clearly a matter of principle and domestic justice instead. 

“Fuck you, Patrick,” Jonny says, totally ignoring the unspoken invitation for the kind of wrestling that they both know will quickly become foreplay. He walks out of the kitchen, leaving their groceries in bags all over the floor and picking up his car keys as he goes. If he sticks around, he’s going to say something he regrets, or he’s going to fuck Patrick until furniture gets broken, and he’s not really in the mood for either, today. Maybe this is something Jonny is weird about, but he entertains a bunch of shit that Patrick is weird about, so turnabout would be fucking nice, for a change. 

He doesn’t look back as he leaves, and Patrick doesn’t try to stop him. 

_ 

 

When Jonny returns, a couple hours later, apologies already warmed up on his tongue, Patrick is still sitting on the counter in the kitchen. But the floor is clear; the groceries have obviously been put away. 

“There you are,” Patrick says when he walks in, and puts his phone back in his pocket, but doesn’t hop down, doesn’t go to Jonny or walk out of the room. 

“Yeah,” Jonny says, sensing that something is going here. It’s not hard to pick up the meaningful looks Patrick is all but lobbing at the fridge, so Jonny bites. 

Everything in there has been not only neatly arranged by date, but it’s all organized into some brand new sort of system, too, things not where they usually are. 

“Is this … are … did you -” 

“I arranged them by food group, too,” Patrick says, coming up behind Jonny to wind his arms around his waist and lift his chin up over his shoulder. “Sorry I was such a dick. I didn’t mean to make you leave. I hate that you left because you didn’t want to be here. Your fridge thing is totally cool, it’s absolutely fine, I will stick to it religiously if it means that much to you; if it makes you stay.” 

Jonny turns in Patrick’s arms and pushes him back against the counter he’d been sitting on, tilts his face down to kiss him until Patrick has his arms up around Jonny’s neck and one leg wrapped up around Jonny’s hip. 

“You don’t have to do that. I’m sorry I was weird about it, I’m sorry I bailed on you, but I’m always coming back, you know that, right? I’m always coming home.” 

“Promise?” Patrick asks, and he’s mostly kidding, but Jonny doesn’t like that he can say ‘mostly’, there. 

“I fucking swear,” he says, his hands shaking on Patrick’s waist. 

“What if I put the mayo in there with the cap left off?” Patrick is laughing, now, and Jonny’s about ready for that wrestling match he was promised. 

 

____

 

iv 

 

Since about five minutes after they first met, Patrick has shown nothing short of absolute comfort for the task of answering Jonny’s phone for him. Enthusiasm, even. 

Nine times out of ten it isn’t actually big deal because it’s someone from the front office or team, a mutual friend or family member; someone for whom Patrick can easily supply the answers to whatever question they called with, and all in all it saves Jonny the hassle of dealing with it himself. 

But sometimes, it’s a problem. 

“Oh yeah? Remind me to give a shit about what you have to say when you have more than one measly Cup to your name, man.” 

Jonny walks into the living room to find Patrick standing with one hand on his hip and Jonny’s phone in the other, sneering into the conversation he’s having on it. That can’t be good. 

Patrick is hissing, now. 

“I personally ended your playoff dreams last year and I’ll do it again this year, you total -” 

Jonny rips the phone out of his hand. 

“Hello? Who - Oh. Hey Mike. Yeah, sorry. He, uh. I left my phone unattended, you know how it goes. Sorry about … well, the fact that he was rude, I guess, everything he said was technically true.” 

Patrick kicks Jonny in the shin once, but hard, and then he storms out of the room, cursing under his breath about ‘the fucking Canadian brotherhood of _suck_ ,’ and how ‘romance should come before fish!’ 

Jonny and Mike’s friendship is a little strained in the months that follow, but he figures they’ll be good by the team the season ends and the playoffs are over. Besides, it’s not his fault the guy is a sore loser. 

( Later that very same day, Jonny’s phone rings when they’re having dinner. 

It’s his mom calling. 

Patrick freezes, a forkful of food halfway between his plate and his mouth, and he pointedly does not look at Jonny. 

Jonny snorts, and pushes the phone across the table. 

“Hi Andrée,” Patrick enthuses, food forgotten about, and Jonny smiles fondly at him, already resigned to the fact that he won’t get to speak to his mother for at least an hour. ) 

 

____

 

v 

 

Mostly, their relationship is a process of getting over and letting go of the small things that bothered them in the beginning; holding hands as they weave rope bridges across the gaps that are too big to get across alone. 

But sometimes the opposite is true. 

Sometimes the problems they have to face together are problems that come to light over time. 

To be clear, here, Jonny has been totally stupid about Patrick since day one. While he could vaguely recognize things about Patrick’s personality or appearance that might not appeal to everyone, way back when he was a scrawny, mouthy rookie, Jonny has also been nothing but absolutely into that. All of it. 

Since the get go, Jonny has never looked at Patrick or been in the same room as him or listened to him talk or watched him play hockey and ever had any any kind of reaction to him that wasn’t some combination of or variety on wanting all up on him, to be under him or over him or next to him or in some kind of spatial relation to him that put their bodies _together_. Jonathan Toews might be a man of simple, uncomplicated pleasures, but he’s always wanted Patrick Kane with a kind of absolute hunger and savage fierceness that he himself is taken aback by, still. 

So Jonny gets it. He knows what he’s looking at when he sees those same desires in other people’s eyes. And he doesn’t like it one bit. 

It is possible, Jonny will concede, that Patrick has picked up on this jealous streak of his. Jonny can admit that this wouldn’t take all that much, since he himself can see it clear as day - a red hot flare against the black-of-night backdrop that everything else becomes, against it; no more than white noise to feed fire. 

Jonny knows Patrick does it just to get a rise out of him, and once upon a time he might have wished he had it in him to refuse to give in, but the very best thing about being with Patrick - being well and truly seen and _known_ by him - is how Patrick shows him his flaws and limitations like they’re something special; something to highlight and be proud of. Something that make him exactly who is. When that’s the person that Patrick loves like this, Jonny isn’t about to complain. 

Except … 

“Patrick, we have company. Do you think maybe a shirt might be a good idea?” 

Patrick tilts his head and frowns as he looks down at his bare chest and then back at Jonny; sparing a glance for said company before he does. 

“Uh, it’s just Sharpy and Bolly? This isn’t anything they don’t see like … every day.” 

If he hadn’t been looking for it, Jonny probably wouldn’t have noticed how Sharpy elbows Brandon quickly; sharply if his wince is anything to go by. Sharpy is obviously really shooting for subtlety, here. 

“It’s kind of different, Peeks,” Sharpy says, mock-gentle and soft. “Out there you’re about to get all trussed up and go to war. Here you’re all …” He makes an expansive gesture, something involving several more fingers than Jonny finds himself caring for, “Stripped _down_. It’s definitely … affecting.” 

Bollig’s failure to disagree loudly, vehemently and immediately is enough to constitute his betrayal to Jonny. Sharpy has always been the best kind of constant disappointment, but Bollig’s treachery cuts deep. 

Still, they are his teammates, and Jonny loves and values them. Which is why, 

“You both want to leave. Unless you’re into the idea of watching Kaner fuck me on the couch you’re sitting on, in which case you need to find a good seat, ‘cus the one you’re in is about to become better occupied.” 

The ever unflappable Bollig chokes on his beer, and even Sharpy, the trolliest of trolls, goes wide eyed and silent. 

Patrick smiles serenely; beatific. 

_ 

 

So sometimes Jonny has to think on his feet and find new ways to mark his territory, ways and means that satisfy him enough to settle whatever it is in him that Patrick makes want to prowl, sets him fit to bare his teeth. 

Sometimes it’s not nearly so easy. 

_ 

 

It’s mostly a joke when people refer to Saad and Shaw as Jonny and Patrick’s adopted sidekicks. Mostly. 

Really, it’s closer to true than Jonny knows how to admit. 

Patrick picked up a devotee in Shaw without ever meaning to, and Jonny hadn’t known for sure that Saad would be more or less the same for him, but he’d maybe hoped. In the interest of justice and fairness and all that. 

It’s healthy and therapeutic, having friendships outside their relationship - ties to teammates that extend beyond professional obligation. Shaw and Saad are new to most of this and they need a guiding hand, while Jonny and Patrick definitely benefit from the excuse to look around with fresh eyes, to appreciate it all all over again. 

‘Appreciation’ doesn’t begin to cover the way Saad and Shaw both look at Patrick sometimes, and what’s worse is the fact that they try to hide it. 

With Sharpy and his awful ilk Jonny knows it’s teasing, everyone concerned knows and revels in the fact that it’s designed to push Jonny’s buttons and even Jonny can laugh at himself in that case. Sometimes. Slightly. Maybe it’s more of a chuckle. 

But Saader and Shawzy don’t laugh after they strip Patrick bare with their eyes. They don’t do it when they know Jonny’s watching, they don’t do it with a showman’s nod to transparency. 

They do it in what Jonny can only assume is their best attempts at subtlety. They do it _seriously_ , and Jonny has no clue what to do about that. 

Thankfully, Patrick does. 

 

_

 

“Jeeeeesus,” Sharpy says, low and oddly appreciative, when Patrick strips his shirt up over his head. He waited until everyone was present and accounted for, Jonny knows, and only half because Patrick winks at him right before he does it. 

He’s a hockey player getting naked in a locker room before practice, this in itself is not an earth shattering event, but everyone stops in their tracks when Sharpy draws attention to it, and Jonny watches in something like slow motion as the entire room grounds to a slow, shocked halt. 

“I …I don’t know if I’m horrified or turned on right now. I think I have a frightened boner,” Shawzy whispers, aforementioned horror clear in his voice, mixed in with some kind of awe, and Jonny can’t help but smile smugly at him, proud and loud about it. 

He distinctly remembers the moment when he’d sucked the biggest bruise into the thin skin at the base of Patrick’s throat. He remembers holding himself up over Patrick on shaking arms, his lips parted over faint strains of Patrick’s pulse, his mouth dry for the taste of him. 

“Do it,” Patrick had urged, fingers locked tight in Jonny’s hair, knees high and trembling at Jonny’s waist, his chest heaving, “Mark me up, Jonny, make it … let them _see_.”   
Not thinking about anyone or anything else, Jonny had fallen down into Patrick, his skin hot in Jonny’s hands, every strain and stretch of his body familiar, every little thing about him everything Jonny had always wanted and would always want. With his heart hammering against Patrick’s ribs, Jonny had latched his mouth to Patrick’s throat and come home. 

Jonny remembers that moment distinctly. 

He’s less clear on how those scratches got drawn across Patrick’s shoulder blades, the exact moment when he’d decided to suck a hickey around his left nipple, what it was that had possessed him to leave honest to god teeth marks sunk still full and blood-dark up under Patrick’s collarbone. 

“Jesus christ,” Sharpy elaborates, drawing Jonny out of his appreciation of Patrick’s body and what it’s saying about what they do together, who they are to one another. 

Jonny shrugs, resists the urge to roll his eyes, because he’s never pretended to be anything other than totally and sometimes physically committed to having Patrick forever, it’s not like Patrick doesn’t refer to them as ‘more than married’ so often that it has stopped surprising or confusing anyone. 

Everyone knows how they are. 

Some people just needed a little extra reminding, is all. 

 

\- 

 

(Later that week, Jonny will overhear this conversation take place between Saad and Shaw, voices low and panicked under the hiss of water reverberating off tile; 

“... and that was weird enough, but now I can’t stop thinking about the two of them. Together. I haven’t gotten off in two days, man. I’m dying, here.” 

“I know, I know,” Saad whispers back, “I didn’t feel totally horrible about it before. Jonny loves Kaner so we can too, yeah? But now I’m caught on … on Jonny. Loving Kaner. And that doesn’t feel like buddies.” 

Jonny almost feels sorry for them. Almost. 

“I bet they cuddle afterwards,” Shawzy says, aghast. 

“I bet they’re so exhausted they don’t have the energy to,” Saad mumbles, miserable. 

Jonny smiles as he walks away, and keeps smiling as he gets dressed. Patrick throws him a questioning look as soon as they get into the car, but Jonny doesn’t give anything up, too busy thinking about how he’s going to throw Patrick over his shoulder and carry him to bed, once they get upstairs. Or try to, at least. )

 

____

 

[ a few of Patrick Kane’s biggest wins, according to Jonathan Toews. ] 

 

i

 

Jonny isn’t the kind of stickler for routine that the people who don’t know him at all probably like to make out he is. He doesn’t much care for most traditional interpretations of luck, and the kinds he does acknowledge are those he makes for himself, those that are all him and nothing to do with repetition or ceremony or ritual.

Still, his stomach drops for a beat or two when he starts unpacking his gear bag one day and realizes that his iPod isn’t in it. Sitting with his hands in his lap, he can clearly see it where it is, in the dock next to Patrick’s side of the bed. He’d meant to grab it before they left for practice, he’d gotten as far as stretching out across the bed to reach for it, but then Patrick had appeared out of nowhere, and being the kind of hockey player and human being that he is, he had taken a chance he’d seen as having been presented to him by the gods, probably.

In what should come as a surprise to no one, Jonny had forgotten all about his iPod.

“Oh my god, what is your face doing right now?”

Patrick is tossing a roll of stick tape between his hands, and Jonny can’t even be mad about his ipod, because Patrick’s hands are Patrick’s hands and Jonny, despite what you might hear, really is only human. No one is at fault here, no one at all.

“Nothing, it’s nothing. Forgot my ipod is all,” he murmurs, setting his bag aside and reaching for his socks, patting Patrick companionably on the knee as he does because he’s right there and he’s Jonny’s favourite person in the world.

He also isn’t moving, stays standing right in front of Jonny but looking down at the floor instead of right at him, seeming to war with something he’s thinking about before he walks away. Only to come right back.

“Here,” he says, holding out his own ipod, stacked up on top of the small case he’s oddly meticulous about storing his Beats earbuds in.

“Uh, thanks and all, but it’s not really about the ipod? It’s about –“

“What’s on it, yeah,” Patrick still isn’t looking at him, but he steps closer to lift Jonny’s hand off the bench and press the ipod and earbuds into it. “Just … the playlist labelled ‘J’. Don’t … it’s whatever, okay.”

And then he’s gone, clear across the room before Jonny can stop him or ask him what the fuck he’s talking about.

He scrolls to the playlist Patrick mentioned and carefully unrolls the earbuds from the tight, perfect little spiral Patrick always keeps them folded into. He hits ‘play’ without looking and sets the ipod down on the bench beside him, willing to humour Patrick on this and pretty much everything else.

The first track is Our Lady Peace.

Every track that follows is one that Jonny loves, nothing Patrick should have on his ipod. The ‘J’ stands for Jonny, and Patrick Kane has saved the day once more.

 

_

 

{ “Did you make that just for me? Just in case I forgot my own?” he asks Patrick later, handing back the ipod and earbud case, preening a little bit when Patrick checks to see if he’s folded the cable up right and seems to find Jonny’s emulated attempt satisfactory.

“No. Jesus, what kind of loser do you think I am? I don’t go around thinking about ways I can pre-prepare for shit you might forget to do. I have my own shit to worry about, man.”  
Jonny squints at him.

“Cool. So you had a playlist full of my favourite songs on your ipod because …”

Patrick leans across him to tuck it into the glove box, and shrugs his shoulders against the upholstery once he’s back on his own side of the car.

“I like listening to it when you’re not around, sometimes. Gotta keep my douchebaggery levels on an even keel when you can’t be there to get the job done in person, you know?”

Jonny is so fucking touched.

“Love you too, asshole.”

“Whatever. It’s not a big deal,” Patrick insists, cheeks pinking up just a little, just how Jonny likes them. He reaches across the front seat just to cup Patrick's jaw in the palm of his hand, and Patrick lets him, nuzzles into it, even.

“Is too,” Jonny corrects him, “and so are you.”

Patrick graciously accepts Jonny’s grateful appreciation once they’re behind closed doors, and maybe their enthusiasm sees them almost knock Jonny’s ipod _and_ the docking station it sits in off the bedside table, but Jonny isn’t too worried. Patrick, as usual, has it covered. Whether either of them realize it or not. }

 

____

 

ii

 

Jonny never explicitly asks Patrick to read to him when they’re in bed, but, well … 

“Wait. So. You’re born into these fractions? Just because your parents are in them?” Jonny is never so comfortable as he is when they lie together like this, his head pillowed on the warm, familiar plains of Patrick’s chest, Patrick sitting up with his back against the headboard because he basically reads himself to sleep every night, Jonny lying down because he needs to spend at least thirty minutes luxuriating in comfort before his body figures out it’s time to go lights out. 

Patrick holds his book in one hand, the other tucked behind his own head, the dip where his bicep meets his tricep a golden shadow from the bedside light, perfect for the fit of Jonny’s nose when he twists back to look up at Patrick. Sometimes, and this is somehow even better, he drapes his free arm around Jonny’s shoulder. Sometimes, better still, he keeps one hand in Jonny’s hair, palm hot and rough on the back of Jonny’s neck. 

“Factions. But yeah. Only until you’re old enough to decide for yourself, though, like Tris is doing now.” 

“I don’t know, it sounds all kinds of complicated. If this society is so much more advanced than ours or whatever, wouldn’t they have a better way of telling earlier where you belong? Who you are?” 

Patrick doesn’t look at him, doesn’t put his book down or mark his page so he can give Jonny’s point all of his attention. But Jonny doesn’t miss the way one side of his mouth ticks up with the new tilt of his head, will never so long as he lives not feel it like a stick to the solar plexus when Patrick’s eyebrows dip together for him, concentrating on _him_. 

“It’s not so much about the choice as the choosing, maybe,” Patrick says, turning the page and shifting lower into the bed, curling the hand he has on Jonny’s neck lower until his fingers are making for his collarbone, his palm curved high over the line of muscle between Jonny’s throat and shoulder. “You’ll always have been who you are, whether that fits with the faction you grew up in or not, but this is the part where you get to say that out loud, you know?” 

“Wouldn’t it be better if you did that before, though? Younger, I mean? You’d grow up with the people who could help you be the best version of who you’re supposed to be.” 

Patrick sighs, and Jonny tries not to smile. 

“Yeah but at what cost, man? You wouldn’t get to grow up with your family, you wouldn’t get to learn about the other factions from a point of view that wasn’t your own. It’s about growth. It’s about patience. It’s about -” Patrick trails off and Jonny sees it out of the corner of his eye when Patrick’s tongue appears at the side of his mouth, licks his lips quick and subconscious. 

Jonny has won. 

Patrick lifts a shoulder to push away the curls that are growing out long enough to brush low at his neck, doesn’t seem to deem it easier or more efficient to use the thumb that’s stroking up and down the path of Jonny’s pulse. 

The hand that’s already holding his book flicks through pages until his forefinger is marking the first page again and taking a breath, he starts to read out loud. 

“There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to …”

Jonny falls asleep before Patrick gets to the end of the first chapter, but he closes his eyes knowing he doesn’t need to tell him to stop. Patrick will remember where they left off, tomorrow night. He never forgets. 

 

____

 

iii

 

Although it’s been clearly, thoroughly, and regrettably repeatedly made clear to everyone who regularly steps foot in their locker room that Patrick and Jonny are Patrick and Jonny, sometimes the newcomers just don’t seem to get it. Like, at all. 

“ _Together_ together? For real?” 

Homophobia is, in Jonny’s experience, less ingrained in the younger guys rolling up through the ranks these days, and it’s a blessed thing. But it’s not always the case, and Jonny has never had a problem with showing new guys the lay of that particular land, here in his city. In fact, he’s just about to step in and do exactly that, when - 

“Because sure, he’s a hockey god and all, but this is Patrick Kane we’re talking about. I’d figured he’d date someone … someone more … like … a football player. A trophy boyfriend, you know? Someone super hot. Like ridiculously good looking. Toews is good at what he does, absolutely, but ...” 

Jonny is, for once, stunned into silence. And out of motion. Frozen in place with nothing to say for himself to such an extent that he doesn’t even reach out to stop Patrick, who cuts around him and breezes into the locker room ahead of him, briefly patting Jonny on the hip as he goes. So great is Jonny’s surprise, so strong its hold on him then, that he can’t even really appreciate it when Patrick leaves him standing out in the corridor alone with a fierce little “Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got this,” dropping his gear bag at Jonny’s feet and letting the door swing shut behind him. 

Suffice it to say, the new guy is ashen faced for the rest of the day. He won’t make eye contact with Jonny for the entirety of his time up here with them, and twice in practices he stops stickhandling and literally skates away from the puck when Patrick approaches, wanting it. 

Even Saad and Shaw take a break from their sexual and existential angst to be nothing but gleeful about this, instead. 

Months and months later, when his curiosity finally grows to be so absolute that it consumes his solemn vow to never, ever ask Sharpy for his help with anything, Jonny asks. 

“I don’t think I could repeat it, not even for you,” Sharpy tells him, not fucking with him, for probably the first and last time. “It was more like … don’t get me wrong, Peeks had a lot to say - a _lot_ \- but it was more … how he said it? It was a fucking feeling, man. It was like an ice storm swept through the locker room. I expected to see my breath in there, when he was done. Only I think I forgot how to breathe, we all did, because he was … I’ve never seen anything like it. Never heard anything like it, either. There was a lot about you being the best hockey player of all time, which was a given, but I’m pretty sure he referred to you as the ‘greatest athlete to ever grace his bed or this earth,’?” Sharpy grimaces, and Jonny has never really struggled to hide how prideful he can be, around other people, knows well and prefers to save it for behind closed doors when he and Patrick can revel in the pride they take in one another and their own feats together. But it’s hard not to smile, now. It’s near impossible to tamp down the hot flare of pride that burns through him when he hears how Patrick talks about him to other people - the things Patrick is comfortable with other people knowing about them. “I kind of tuned out from fright when he started in on the really really explicit bits about just how good you are in bed, but the gist of it was that … I guess he said there was no one out there that could be better than you? At anything. At _him_. It was awful. Like incredible and terrifying. Classic Peeks stuff, you know?” 

And though he’ll probably never understand how he lucked out in getting to, Jonny does know. 

He knows exactly what it’s like when Patrick gets so worked up about something - so completely and utterly furiously passionate about it - that he goes almost silent, gets still. 

Jonny knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that and his sense of empathy kicks in hard for a guy he’ll probably never get the chance to play hockey with again, now. 

Because Jonny’s boyfriend read him his rights and if anyone in the world has ever for one second found Jonny to be scary or intimidating, Patrick Kane could bring them to their knees with a look. 

Patrick loves singularly. He loves with everything he’s got, and he loves joyfully, loves relentlessly. Viciously, when he has to. 

Jonny knows well what it’s like to be loved like that. 

 

____

 

iv

 

It’s not a lie, nothing said to make someone laugh, when Jonny says he relishes the opportunity to not be Patrick’s captain during practices. 

Biel is the worst thing that ever happens to them, professionally and personally, but it happens for a reason and Jonny had trusted Patrick when he’d said so - when he’d decided to make it so. 

The single upside to months spent apart - Jonny at least bored and feeling useless, wasted - had been the practices. 

Patrick is Jonny’s favourite person to play hockey with. Patrick is, these days, so much of why hockey is still Jonny’s favourite thing to do. Most days. 

But the guy is now and always has been an unholy terror in practices, when there’s nothing on the line aside from the apparently perfect opportunity to show Jonny up and make his life briefly impossible. 

Whether he’s skating in lazy loops around Jonny, verbally critiquing every single thing he does with a puck, or losing patience with even himself and the confinement of words, ducking in to strip Jonny of the puck and show him rather than tell him what he means, Patrick acts like it’s Jonny’s job to be not only as good as Patrick is, but good in the very same ways. 

It’s maybe the one thing they’ll never truly see eye to eye on. They have their differences in spades and they’ve learned a thousand times in a thousand different ways to love each and every one of them, somehow. They’re not one of those weird couples who has a unified, singular outlook on almost everything and the spaces where they don’t fit are never going to get smaller, won’t ever go away altogether. Sometimes that’s Jonny’s favourite place to be with Patrick. But through the years they’ve slowly, slowly learned to have the patience it takes to see one another’s side of things - to understand it at the very least, if they’ll never share it or like it or feel the same way themselves. 

Patrick’s insistence that Jonny be another version of him out on the ice is not like that. 

In the beginning, Jonny found it insulting and infuriating. He was hurt and angry to think that Patrick thought he had so much room for improvement; needed to change so much about his own game before Patrick could see him as being as good as millions of other people could. It daunted and frustrated him to think that he had so far to go before Patrick would respect him as his equal. 

Next came Jonny’s realization that there was something else there he needed to pay attention to. Something in and around his belief that Patrick was wrong and his determination to do what Patrick thought he couldn’t - to be what Jonny himself didn’t think he needed to be - anyway. 

The next couple of years had been a lot of fun indeed. Confusing, terrifying, dream-come-true fun. 

Now Jonny knows to see Patrick’s attitude as the compliment that it is. 

Patrick is the first to defend Jonny to anyone who ever dares to say there are things he could change or improve on, though he’s constantly saying the same himself. Patrick lets Jonny be hard on himself when he needs to be, when it will make him better, but he has never once during their time together given Jonny a hard time for anything he did or couldn’t do. 

“No, like. This way,” he had said to Jonny once, just the two of them hanging back out on the ice long after practice had let out. “Kick it back to the heel of your stick first and that’ll give you the split second you need to confuse a goalie, top shelf, boom.” 

Jonny had stood looking at him. 

“I don’t need to do that to get top shelf, Kaner. There are a million different ways to do what you’re doing right now, why do we need to spend an hour getting this one small trick right? Is this really a productive use of our time?” 

He’d still been a rookie, then. He’d worried about stuff like that, when he should have been looking at every opportunity to spend time with Patrick for what it truly was. 

“Well … yeah,” Patrick had seemed confused by the question, almost hurt that Jonny was asking it. “There are other ways to do it, it’s not like you can’t score goals your way, duh. But … you could do it this way, too. We’d both be able to get this down, and I’ve never seen anyone else do it, I think anyone else can. See, it’s really hard to flip it and not lose track of it or let someone else get in there and take it, but you’re fast enough, you could do it, I know you can.” 

And Jonny will remember that moment forever. He thinks about it every single time he chases down a goalie or feels the tap of rubber at the heel of his stick. He thinks about it every time Patrick looks at him like he’s something special. 

Patrick doesn’t think Jonny needs to be better, when he tries to coach him to be more like himself. He just sees in Jonny whatever it is that’s in him that makes it possible for him to do the impossible and he wants Jonny to do it with him. He wants them to do everything they can _together_. 

He’s still a pain in Jonny’s ass at practice and that doesn’t change when he gets back from Biel, hopefully won’t change so long as they live. 

“Hey, hey. Pay attention, your captain is waiting,” Patrick says to Kruger one afternoon, kicking at his skate and frowning at him, tongue between his teeth as his shifts his weight from foot to foot, eager to take his turn at the drill. 

A drill which he then uses as an opportunity to undress Jonny in front of their entire squad and score a goal so beautiful Jonny kind of wants to throw up. 

No matter how hard Patrick pushes Jonny, he is never anything but absolutely respectful of his direction as their captain - as Patrick’s captain - and that might not be a way Jonny likes to think of himself, but it’s just another way Patrick finds to show him that he’d do anything for him, that he has his back no matter what and no matter how little sense Patrick’s method of doing so makes to Jonny until he finally figures it out. 

So Jonny finds that one way to make the most of their time apart during the lockout and he’s not even slightly exaggerating when he accidentally and diplomatically lets it ‘slip’ to the media that Patrick is a little shithead during practices. 

He’s also going to do everything in his power to ensure that right by his side, making his every waking moment difficult one way or another, is exactly where Patrick stays. 

 

____

 

v

 

Jonny would like to think that he’s done a pretty stellar job of well and truly putting the ‘Captain Serious’ thing to bed and when he’s asked about it now it’s mostly a throwback joke and a sure fire way to get an eye roll and a laugh out of him. 

There are times and places when the title sticks, still, though. Moments even now when it’s hard for Jonny to deny that it served a clear purpose, once upon a time. 

For example, tonight, when they’ve just been knocked out of the playoffs in their own city,on their home ice, by the LA Kings. 

Guys deal with it one of two ways - by showering and getting the hell out of there as quickly as it’s possible to do so, going home to seek refuge in a family that’ll always be there for them no matter what. Or by taking as long as they can to get changed, standing around with their arms around their teammates’ shoulders and reclaiming _this_ kind of family, reinforcing the bond before the media takes it and dissects it. 

Jonny has time for everyone who passes him by, goes to each and every stall in that locker room and forces eye contact that makes his chest burn with something like shame, some deep, rotten sense of failure that Jonny can only deal with in the form of determination to do better next time, to never let this happen again. That’s what they focus on, that night. The next time. The next shot they know to their bones they’re going to have at this and the one that they’re going to take home. 

When it’s only Jonny and Patrick left, Jonny stops trying, stops fighting. When they’re alone, at last, he pulls his hood up over his skull and closes his eyes, puts his head in his hands and looks at nothing, looks at what it’s all come to for them this year. 

He hasn’t looked at Patrick since they hugged out on the ice -and it had been easy to do so then because they were standing there as part of a team, part of everything they’ve worked for and just two little pieces of the biggest sense of pride either of them have ever known. 

Back here, they’re just them, together and Jonny can’t meet Patrick’s eye, can’t look at him as just one - alone. Now, Jonny can’t force his thoughts and his words to deflect outward in respect of a spectrum of effort, a kaleidoscope of moments and bodies to be proud of, to thank and to hold up. 

By himself, Jonny doesn’t know how to think in terms of anything that isn’t everything he couldn’t do, all the ways he let everybody down. He can’t look at Patrick from a place of regret, because he knows with every cell of his being that Patrick will instantly start to build him back up again, knows well what it takes to show Jonny back up to ground level and keep him moving forward from there. Nobody makes Jonny feel better - feel more purposeful and motivated - than Patrick does and Jonny might need that right now, but he doesn’t want it. 

And Patrick knows so. 

Some time later, how long Jonny doesn’t know for sure, Patrick rises from where he’d been sitting next to Jonny in silence and he ducks back down to kiss Jonny at the corner of his mouth, quick and soft and careful - sorry. 

“I’ll go. Start putting together something for dinner. You’ll be home by the time it’s ready, right?” 

It’s not a question and Jonny can’t smile, but he almost wants to. 

“Yeah,” he says, agreeing because it’s the best he can do. “I’ll be home.” 

 

___

 

[ five of the very best messes they make, together ] 

 

i 

 

Patrick can hear someone talking long before he gets the door open and he knows from this fact that what he’s about to walk in on isn’t good. It’s just Jonny he can hear, he realizes with his key still in the lock and that bodes even worse. 

“And you thought calling me was the best way to do that? You really thought I’d help you guilt him into it? You’re an intelligent woman, Donna, and I have a lot of respect for you, so don’t tell me you for one second thought I’d do that.” 

Jonny is talking to Patrick’s mom. Patrick knows this without a shadow of a doubt, doesn’t even need to have heard him address her by her first name, because the edge of steel in Jonny’s voice is the one Patrick has only ever heard for his parents, the cool clip of it reserved specifically for his mom. 

“I get that. Family is a big deal to me, to the both of us. But we’re a family now too and that’s all this is. .... Of course not. I’d never make him think he couldn’t go back home, I’d never want him to feel that way. It’s not even that he doesn’t want to, it’s that … it’s that we have plans. It’s that we made plans together.” 

Patrick’s been expecting this particular argument, but he hadn’t thought to worry that he wouldn’t be the one having it. He’s so surprised to hear Jonny having it instead that he can’t move away from the doorway, can’t even round the corner into their living room to let Jonny know that he’s home, he’s here. 

“I can’t … why would … Forever. Forever, okay? That’s exactly how long there’s going to be a ‘we,’ Donna. And if you don’t know that by now, then there’s nothing I can say that will make you see. Patrick loves you, he loves all of you, you’re always going to be his family, but I am too, now, and the sooner you accept that and what it means, the easier all of this will be. Happy holidays, Donna. Tell everyone else I said ‘hey’ and that we’ll see you guys soon.” 

There’s deafening silence for a moment, then a harsh breath that neatly divides the absolute silence of before and the loud and ugly smash of Jonny’s phone shattering apart against the wall. 

Patrick has his arms around Jonny and Jonny’s face tucked in against his throat before he has taken a breath, before he’s given his body any direction to move. 

They stand together like that for a long time and the collar of Patrick’s shirt is damp when Jonny finally pulls away, but neither of them say anything until they’re on their hands and knees, picking up the pieces of Jonny’s phone. 

“How much did you hear?” Jonny asks, not looking at him and Patrick doesn’t mind. 

“Probably most of it,” Patrick admits, knowing how much time it takes his mom to drop something devastatingly hurtful into the middle of a conversation, knowing exactly how little time that is. 

Patrick has no idea what to say next - doesn’t know an eloquent or meaningful way to say ‘I know exactly how you feel, because my family make me feel that way sometimes, too, but I love them and I love you too and there’s nothing I can do to make any of this easier.’ 

“I’m sorry that … that …” Patrick sighs, frustrated, “I’m sorry, I guess. I’m just sorry.” 

“You don’t have to be,” Jonny tells him, taking the small pile of plastic pieces from Patrick’s hands and adding them to the ones he’s just dumped into the dustpan. “You shouldn’t be. I love you,” he says, like it explains something. And it does. 

It’s the first time he’s ever said it to Patrick. 

“I love you, too,” Patrick tells him, crawling to get to him, and it’s not the first time he’s said it to Jonny, but it sounds different now. 

It sounds like a beginning. 

 

____

 

ii

 

“Hey have you seen the -” Jonny doesn’t get to finish the sentence before Patrick is holding the remote out for him, not looking up from his book to do so. 

“Thanks,” Jonny says, settling in next to Patrick and keeping the volume low even though Patrick doesn’t ask him to. 

An hour later, 

“Hey, you wanna -”

“Yeah, let’s make something to eat,” Jonny says, already up and off the couch and stretching on his way to the kitchen. 

Their countertops are, as usual, a mess of mass culinary devastation by the time they’re done. Jonny has grated cheese stuck to his elbow, and Patrick’s pretty sure he can feel something dripping down the back of his neck. 

They eat together, they clean up together, and halfway through doing so Jonny hoists Patrick up onto a newly clean countertop so he can start in on a brand new kind of clusterfuck. 

No matter what they start, or who or what starts it in the first place, they finish everything they can together. 

 

____

 

iii

 

“Well, those two can’t be on the same team, duh,” Shaw says, nodding across the room to where Patrick is taping Jonny’s socks, because the tape for some reason actually stays in place when he does it. 

Jonny freezes, Patrick lifting his head to look at him with a matching expression of horror, because it kind of sounds like Shawzy just told Q how to do his job. 

“Yeah, like. It’s completely up to you, coach,” Bicks pipes up, throwing Shaw an incredulous look, “But,” then comes a sheepish grimace, “That wouldn’t be fair, obviously.” 

Jonny can’t believe this. He looks around the room at his teammates like he’s never seen them before. He dares to sneak a glance at Q, only to find him rolling his eyes. 

“Obviously,” Q echoes Bicks, and Patrick is scrunching up his nose, standing up and swinging a leg out of his straddle of the bench, clearly gearing up to unleash hell. 

“I’ll let you guys know for sure what the teams are later, but just be aware that it’s going to be split squads, maybe work on not killing each other out there today.” 

And with that, he’s gone, and Patrick is on the war path. 

Or he intended to be, at least. 

“No offense or anything,” Shawzy says when everyone in the room turns to look at them in unison. “And it’s not like the rest of us aren’t rockstars,” he spares a moment for a smug nod to … himself, apparently, “But it wouldn’t be fair to have you two out there together when you’re … you know.” 

Jonny comes up behind Patrick, stands shoulder to shoulder with him until he feels Patrick note his presence, shifts to accommodate it when Patrick lets his weight fall heavier into Jonny’s side. 

“When we’re what? Dating?” Patrick demands, winding up to remind the team once again that just because he’s banging their captain that does not mean he treats him any differently out on the ice. Like anyone needs confirmation of that at this point. 

They don’t really have time for this to become a team wide debate, but it does anyway, continuing well beyond the time they have to get ready to take the ice, following them out there. 

“What, then? Fucking great hockey players?” Patrick yells across the blue line at Oduya, who is still shaking his head at a pass Jonny just used to set Patrick up for a tap in.

“No,” Oduya says, sighing, “Obviously, yes, but no, not …”

“Oh, we can’t be on the same team because we’re fucking nice to each other?” Patrick asks, hands on his hips, when Hammer makes a face at him for helping Jonny up off the ice after his blade catches a chip. 

“No, it’s not that, not exactly,” Hammer tries but ultimately struggles to explain. 

“Fucking _that_!” Shawzy all but screams, jumping to his feet and pointing at them so vehemently that it’s a motion that somehow encompasses his entire body. “That right there is exactly why you two can’t be on a team together if we’re shooting for fair.” 

Jonny lifts his head to look at him, looks back at Patrick and then down at the deodorant in his hand that Shawzy seems to be offending by, is still pointing almost violently to. 

“We can’t play together because we exhibit good bodily hygiene?” Patrick asks faintly, clearly bewildered now. 

“You tossed that right to him! And he caught it!” Shawzy elaborates, not even slightly patient. 

“Oh so we have to be split up because we have good aim?” Patrick is back to indignant, now. 

“He didn’t look up when you threw it to him! He also didn’t _ask_ you for deodorant,” Shawzy finishes big, loud and dramatic, eyes glinting and vindicated, mouth set determined. He thinks he has this one in the bag. 

Jonny glances back down at the deodorant in his hand and thinks back over the last couple of minutes. He remembers standing up to look for some on his shelf and he remembers not finding any. He remembers sitting back down to pull on his socks and then he remembers reaching out to catch the deodorant that he’d known Patrick would have seen him looking for, had known Patrick would give back once he realized Jonny needed it. He also remembers knowing and communicating all of this non-verbally. 

“Oh,” Patrick says, sitting down in his own stall and seeming to mull all of this over, too. 

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Shawzy says, “You two can’t play together because that shit works for us when we need it to, but you knowing one another’s hopes and dreams and deepest darkest secrets isn’t going to help when we’re trying to put on a display of equality, here. You can’t play together because of your fucking mind-meld.” 

“Oh,” Patrick says again, smiling now as he laces up his sneakers and stands up to pull on his hoody, grinning across the room at Jonny like he’s especially fond of him right now, “You could have just said so.” 

 

____

 

iv

 

It’s kind of a mess, the first time they have sex. 

It’s literally a mess, in that there’s lube pooling from an open bottle into Jonny’s carpet, and it’s figuratively a mess in that it takes them a while to figure it out, takes more patience than Jonny had thought either of them possessed before they get it really, really right. But they certainly get there in the end, Patrick obnoxiously pushing Jonny’s hands out from under him so he’d landed hard along Patrick’s back instead, helpless to do anything but go with it when Patrick had reached between them, blown Jonny’s mind with the view of his own grip on his ass cheeks, holding himself open for Jonny, swearing loudly and asking for more. 

“Oh man,” Patrick says afterwards, lying diagonally across the bed with his head and shoulders hanging off of it until he suddenly jerks upwards in a surprisingly graceful curl of motion, resting on his elbows and levelling Jonny with a stunningly sincere look. “Thank you.” 

Jonny’s still kind of out of it, his vision a little blurred and his hearing maybe gone too, because, 

“Did you seriously just thank me for banging you?” 

“Hell yes,” Patrick tells him, climbing across the mountains and valleys of discarded covers to get to Jonny, sitting across his thighs and leaning down to kiss him, his hands hot and searching across Jonny’s shoulders like they still hadn’t had their fill of his body, “I thought you were gonna be a nightmare about this. All pushy and know-it-all like usual. Which we should definitely revisit,” he notes, grinning sweet and kind of mindless, a little manic still, when Jonny echoes the grip that had made him sees stars, holds Patrick’s cheeks in a hard clench of his hands and gently lets his thumbs drift into their center, searching and finding, “But you weren’t dumb about this. You did what you were told,” he all but purrs, “You gave me exactly what I wanted.” 

And then it’s Jonny’s turn to be smug. 

“Exactly, huh?” He leans up to catch Patrick’s mouth, doesn’t try to stop himself when he finds himself wanting to bite a little harder at it than he probably should, rewarded by Patrick’s encouraging groan. 

“Oh we are going to be so, so good at this,” Patrick vows and Jonny knows he’s not just talking about sex. 

 

____

 

v

 

The next time Jonny has the Stanley Cup in his hands, he looks across the ice and makes eye contact with a sweaty, mulleted, widely grinning Patrick Kane and finds himself wishing he had his hands _on him_ instead. 

He passes the Cup off to whoever is next in line, Jonny doesn’t even know because he thinks he’s having some kind of breakdown, literally pushes his incredible teammates aside to get to Patrick. 

“Hey,” he says when he gets there, getting a fist in Patrick’s jersey and shaking him a little bit, feeling like his heart is going to tremble right out of his body. 

“Um, hey there?” Patrick says, amused, but still grinning at Jonny like he’s singularly responsible for the way the moon climbs skies. 

“So you should marry me,” Jonny says in a rush, not knowing if he’s more deafened by the ringing in his ears or the cheers booming out through the arena around them. He has no idea what Patrick is going to say, he has no idea if he’s blown any chance he might have had of Patrick saying yes, doing this here and now. This couldn’t be any further from planned, but Jonny no longer knows how to want something from Patrick and not have the confidence that he can and should ask. 

Patrick starts to laugh and Jonny remembers in the embrace of that warm, familiar sound where he is and who he’s with and what they’ve just done. 

“Should I?” Patrick throws his arms around Jonny’s shoulders, looks at him in a brand new way; one that hopefully says that Patrick wants to look at him every day for the rest of their lives. “Alright then, if you think so. That sounds good.” 

“It does?” Jonny asks, not because he doesn’t think so too, but because he wants to be sure that Patrick is sure. 

“Absolutely, let’s do this,” Patrick tells him, leaning in to touch their temples together before he skates away to take his turn with their Cup. 

 

____  
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**Author's Note:**

> I'll address concrit if it's polite and relative to characterization within this story etc. 
> 
> I don't know how garbage is dealt with in their buildings in reality and thank god for that. 
> 
> Some stuff sticks to canon points in their lives, most stuff is not written to be specifically or canonically referential. 
> 
> None of this is true nor profitable.


End file.
